


Striking The Stones

by Allegro



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Valvert Gift Exchange, valvert - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 15:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegro/pseuds/Allegro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The water whispers louder, and Javert finds he has no time for it.</p><p>Prompt: 43 for the Valvert Gift Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Striking The Stones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ConstanceComment](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/gifts).



> Prompt : 43. Valjean gets injured at the Barricades. When he sets Javert free he’s already been hurt, and is trying to hide the injury. Valjean’s plan is to get Marius out or die trying, but now Javert is forced to make his choice a little bit earlier. It would be just as wrong to let Valjean die as it would be to arrest him.
> 
> Rating: PG
> 
> I own nothing. This is non profit fun only.

He moves past the barracks, crouched low behind the barricade of cabinet and wardrobe and cartwheels and the splintered back legs of broken chairs. He shambles through, muscles shifting like the working back of an ox, fingers slotting the buttons through his stolen uniform. He lies low and careful.

He is hit.

He does not know what he expects when he hears the cannon fire, hears the sudden thrust of sculpted metal into the flimsy protection of furniture; white light breaks beneath his eyes. He is thrown as a chunk of debris, be it metal or wood or a congelation of both, rips into his side and explodes in into blistering agony. There are curses, shouts; young hands reach over the barricade and grasp at the so called volunteer, hauling him up and over. 

Valjean is breathless as a musket is pressed into his back. He cannot focus on the pain. He does not have a choice, not now, not with the memory of Cosette’s tears. He looks into the eyes of a golden young man, grand and dreadful, and says his words.

“I have come here as a volunteer,” He cannot focus on the pain. “I have come to help.”

There is no choice.

.

Javert, First Inspector of the state police, is trussed up like cattle to slaughter.

He does not mind it much. He has counted away the hours by the burns beginning to form on his wrists, aided along by the twists and tight knots of the securing ropes.

His pre-death boredom is ended when suddenly a man blocks the door, and with it the dying sunlight. Valjean moves past the drunk, past the blasted tables and the few remaining chairs, walks over the mingling of blood, ash and whisky on the floor. It is only when he stands close does Javert spy the sheen of white hanging down around tired eyes.

He smiles; it is enough to make a rabid dog recoil. But Valjean, his Valjean, just stares through him, as if puzzled by his very presence.

“You,” Javert’s chuckle is a bubbling torment of sound. “You have been waiting for this, have you not? The convict struggling along in the shadow of the condemned. How sweet and strange is the working of justice. I thought to have you, and here you are, having me!”

Valjean offers no comment. He dully looks at Javert, looks at the ropes pulled tight around the man’s boots and chest and legs, before he turns and limps to the door.

.

Out on these stones, the rain beats hard and short and merciless.

Valjean’s hands are a tough, tiring fixture on Javert’s forearm. He is dragged outside; for the first time in hours, he is greeted by air, balmy summer choked with smoke and the heat of cannon-fire, before he is veered away, marched down to the backstreets, where the noise dwindles into muted mumbles of explosions and human cries.

Valjean attempts to push him further in, as if to prevent him being seen. Despite the furrow in his brow and the grit of his teeth, his hand is disturbingly gentle. Despite the hiss and gasp lining his breath, he is overall silent, and does not respond to Javert’s taunts.

The dank of the wall soaks through Javert’s back, his burrowed civilian clothes, the thin coat and the rag of a shirt. His flat cap had been knocked off, and then worn, by the ugly drunk with the rasping voice. His head feels exposed without the brim of his top hat to sit on his brow. He feels exposed without his great coat, its comforting anchor on his body. It is a sign of his status, of his skill, of his trade. It is a sign that turns down eyes and heads. It is a sign that keeps the world away. Without it, he feels naked. All he has is the wolfish muscles clenched, firm and proud, in his jaw.

None the less, he looks at Valjean, and notes the man’s visible and uncharacteristic tremor. Javert is unafraid. For the first time, or to his knowledge, Jean Valjean will commit murder. And he, Javert, shall be wholly right and just. Yes, a pleasing way to die. To think of the dark spaces that linger after retirement, of cold walls and a feeble pension. Of letting moss grow over your senses. No, this is, despite the sordidness of its nature, a fitting way to end his career. Secure and honest to his scruples until the last.

Valjean was never a graceful man, even if he had held himself with bullish dignity as Monsieur La Maire. But he never fumbled as he did now, pulling his pistol from his belt as a blind man would paw at his dog’s collar. The meander of his hands whittles away at Javert’s nerves.

Valjean blinks slowly at the pistol, turning it over in his hands, as if inspecting it for the first time. And then, after all that effort, he tucks it back into his belt.

Javert almost barks with laughter.

"Why, quite a show," The beetle eyes scuttle to life as he spies a flash of metal, clean cut and cool, under the moon. "Oh, a knife? Of course. Typical for a cutthroat, a blaggard. More satisfying, is it not?"

Valjean keeps his eyes down.

Javert is spun round, and then pushed face first against the wall. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the bricks, retaining the slow, sly creep of his smirk. He waits.

There is no freeze of steel against his back, no glacier of metal driving into the skin, parting flesh and tissue and organ, signalling his ultimate retirement. In its place is a sudden tug on his wrists; then fingers, clammily warm, plucking the bonds free.

He is pushed again. Away from Valjean, left stumbling into the alley. There is the scent of blood clinging to the breeze, the remains of gunpowder clamped beneath his short fingernails, the sudden shock of summer moonlight hollowing out the features on the livid grey of Valjean’s face.

His wrists burn. He flexes his hands; bones crack, blood flows. Free.

Valjean does not wait for the moment to pass, for this communication of souls to stand on ceremony, for the sick cry of disgust on Javert’s tongue. Instead, he stares at the spaces above Javert’s head, and then, with a hefty sigh, he wills himself to turn back.

Javert releases a screech.

Valjean is back slammed, spun, colliding with the opposite wall. His eyelashes droop to the dragged skin of his cheeks. He does not struggle. He does not resist.

"You fool," Javert spits. He grasps Valjean’s collar, near enough strangling the maddening fiend with his own cravat. He feels suddenly insanely strong, frenzied, enough to lift this falsely Christian giant off his feet. What a sight he must be; teeth bared with no evidence of a mouth to hold them. "You fool, what do you think you are doing? I swear Valjean, I shall have you…"

Valjean’s legs are trembling, a tremble that runs up his being until he seems to embody it. His lips are pressed shut, his eyes are dull, his body animated with a subdued agony; it reminds Javert of the restless twitches of a fallen drought horse.

"You’re free," Valjean croaks. There is something dampening the side of his shirt, spreading out, dark and wet and strange. "You are free, Javert."

Javert, now freed, now near insane himself, has no business with dying angels.

He hisses like a creature possessed as Valjean tells him where he is, where he can be found. They both know that neither Valjean, nor Javert, shall ever return to the condemned address, if this night chooses to have its way.

.

Javert walks the streets in a mockery of his past patrols. He has hidden the burn of the rope beneath his leather stock. He has buckled it tight, even if it rubs the flesh red and raw. It has not rained since the brief shower of the previous night, but his walking cane has struck damp cobbles, small puddles, gutters running with red. The city streets has had rain from the veins of its inhabitants, revolutionaries, protectors, and it has been a downpour.

Javert runs those roles in his head, over and over, and finds he has no place in any of them. With each step, his mind whirs and clicks, slow and steady, then frantic and fast. He was always a single minded man, his thought process and sense of duty forever progressing in one direction, like a crab who can only crawl sideways. Now, he has learned comprehension. Now, the crab is attempting to walk forwards, and so, shall knowingly rip out its limbs from its sockets.

Beneath him, he imagines the caverns of the sewers, the long and stinking bowels of Paris, snaking below the cobbles dribbled with blood. He has reason to believe it is a river of salvation for his convict. He is sure there is irony in that analogy somewhere, but he has not the spirit to find it. None the less he is careful not to think of filthy waters and open wounds. Before he knows it, he has headed down to the river, down the mildewed steps blunted with age and shit, down to where the mouth of the sewer leaks the city’s waste.

The Seine River licks at the shore in tumbles of grey, scummy waves. The night makes the pits of the water resemble an abyss. Flutters of moonlight crash off the tiny spits of surf and disturb the deeps, moulding shifting shades beneath its surface.

A clatter, a huff, a sigh.

A shadow emerges from the gaping rent of the sewer mouth.

With his back bent like an old hag, Valjean carries his young man as a farmer would carry a slaughtered pig. The bulky legs shake with the effort; Valjean’s head is down, his eyes open upon seeing Javert, and they register an acute and despairing horror. Valjean’s knees waken, struggling with the weight of the boy, and his knees buckle and strike the stones. Javert is aware he has carried himself two, three strides before his own hands wrest under Valjean’s arms, and just like that, convict, Inspector and revolutionary, are crumpled together on the ground.

Valjean realises a pained, pathetic sound; a plea.

“One hour,” Valjean parts his chapped lips; begs. “One hour.” He can barely push out the words, or the breath sustaining it. His eyelashes shudder sporadically, as if threatening unconsciousness. Valjean grits his teeth and raises his body, huge hands braced against the ground, readying himself to power on. Javert thinks of Jean the Jack breaking open rock with his bare hands, of Madeleine bearing the brunt of the collapsed cart with merely the wrestle of shoulder and back. An oxen of a man, stealing away a ragged infant through the breath of night as if she were nought but air.

Valjean, once again, pleads; in its wake, Javert trembles.

He thrusts his baton between his teeth. He seizes Valjean’s shoulders and looms his face close to his; before he bends his knees and makes to haul the man up. Valjean cries out for the first time in a low, throaty howl and the idiotic revolutionary begins to stir. The boy rolls on his side; whimpers, retches. Valjean crawls to the young man; reaches for him, and then systemically, loses his strength, and drops down once again. Javert curses, and with his thick fingers wound in Valjean’s shirt, attempts to get the man up again.

Through the dark, a youthful pair of eyes blink curiously at him.

Beneath the filth and stink of his clothes, and under the light of the stars, Javert sees the young man clearly. The young lawyer boy, the ninny who can’t shot, the soft handed academic who owes him those pistols. Watching, gormless, evidently alive.

Javert grinds his teeth down to his gums. This is it? This is the prat his convict is half dead for?

The water, still and bleak, seems to whisper.

“You foolish boy,” His voice raises to a screech. Pontmercy flinches, twitches, and holds a shaking hand up over his face. His knuckles are split from scrambling over jagged remains of his friend’s barricade, his nails are blackened by gunpowder. He shrinks beneath Javert’s sudden, inexplicable rage. “You foolish, posing brat!”

Pontmercy shivers on the stones. He has a spaced look about him, a kind of mindless distress, as if unable to place himself. The pure blank of shock.

A moment passes between them. The boy quivering on the banks, Javert with his hands on Valjean.

The water whispers louder.

Javert finds he has no time for it.

He speaks again. His voice gentles, or as much as he can make it. The bark becomes a growl.

“You foolish boy. Come and aid me.”

The cab waits nearby. Valjean is a task to shift, even as he mumbles deliriously to Pontmercy, murmuring his brat’s name and trying to wrangle promises, reassurances, from the overwhelmed boy. Javert is fearful; Valjean is becoming disconnected from the events around him, near deranged from the weakness sprang in his overworked limbs and the stench of dank and death in his nose.

In the cab, Pontmercy sits silent as the world travels past in misshapen black through the small, square windows. Javert knows little of these things, and he is certainly in no place to presume on one’s mental state, but he is certain the boy is hearing the echo of gunshots and rallying shouts. Valjean is sprawled on the opposite chair. As they pull away from the Seine, the water’s whispers turn to wails, before it seems to fall, to close in on itself, and then, Javert does not hear it at all, until when they pull into the place of Valjean’s address. In his ears, water gurgles and hisses as Javert keeps the writing of Valjean’s address clamped tight and sweaty in his fist. He kicks open the cab door. A young girl, who had possibly heard the rock of a carriage and the churn of wheels on gravel, is already standing at the gate.

Something in the twisting of her face makes Javert recall white sheets spotted with blood and shawn hair, but this girl is healthy, young and dark and resembling a little bird in frame and feature. Her eyes round as Pontmercy stumbles out of the carriage. Their gazes meet. They stand completely still, disbelieving, oddly old in their response. Javert snarls as he emerges. Valjean’s head rests against his shoulder, his burly arm slung around his back. Javert’s hat is off, his coat unbuttoned and flapping loose, his leather stock twisted.

“What are you waiting for?” he snaps. “Help us, damn it.” He turns to Valjean; lies him back down on the floor of the carriage, for the man is too heavy; he cannot lift him. It will take the disgraced Inspector, that being him, the boy lawyer and the whore’s daughter to get him to safety. He visibly bristles as he glowers down at his convict. Valjean’s face is composed like a stone saint, his breath shallow and hard to detect, white hair limp and laid flat across his forehead.

“Help me,” Javert’s whisper is like the water. “By God, help me.”


End file.
